


Prom Night

by TheAlchemistsDaughter



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben is a dumbass but his heart's in the right place, F/M, First Time, Highschool AU, Loss of Virginity, POV Ben Solo, Prom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 03:04:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20202691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAlchemistsDaughter/pseuds/TheAlchemistsDaughter
Summary: Rey asks Ben to prom.





	Prom Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KyloTrashForever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KyloTrashForever/gifts).

Ben closes his locker and jumps when he sees Rey leaning against the next one over. He’s still not quite used to her, to having a girl at his lunch table, but Poe fancies Finn and she and Finn are inseparable. Something about her not having anyone else, but Ben didn’t see how that could be true. With her looks and personality, she had to be more popular than Ben, which meant more than one friend.

He struggles, sometimes, to comprehend how small she is. He hasn’t been that size since he hit puberty. He’s used to girls being shorter than him of course, and shorter than Rey even, but other girls don’t get this close to him. Rey isn’t short, but she is thin, and light. Delicate. Shockingly, affrontingly beautiful, but she doesn’t act like the other beautiful girls. She wears men’s clothes without appearing to know the difference, band tees, ripped jeans, boots. She doesn’t curl or twirl her hair or suck lollipops while he’s talking to her or wear strawberry lip-gloss. She could be a different person if she wanted to, but bizarrely, she seems content where she is. Everyone at their high-school is a social climber, if only for their own survival, Ben knows this. He would have been beaten up a lot more if not for his mom being who she is, which gave him clout he happily gave away as if he was being mugged for it, the fake friends quickly disappearing once they got what they wanted. Except Poe, who he hung around like a shadow.

Rey is chewing gum, her hair up, black Metallica shirt and washed-out grey jeans. “Hey, Ben.”

“Hey.”

She’s not facing him, instead leaning with her shoulders against the lockers and the rest of her body curved away to twist idly from side to side. She looks down the hall away from him, distracted. He wonders if she is just waiting for their other friends to show up. She looks like she’s checking for a teacher, or trying to look like she’s not really talking to him, as if she was about to buy drugs from him or something.

Not that he sells drugs, he’s not that cool.

With the way her back is arched, he thinks again about her tits. He thinks about her tits a lot, more than he should. Tits in general are still a mystery to him, but Rey’s are somehow within reach of his imagination, ever since he stupidly, _stupidly_, opened his big mouth that one time at lunch. She had pushed the neck of her T-shirt almost to the edge of her shoulder to scratch an itch, and Ben hadn’t seen a bra strap. Most of the time, he forgot bras existed, since they certainly didn’t feature in _his_ life, but for some God-forsaken reason he had blurted without thinking, “Are you not wearing a bra?”

Poe had looked like he could kill him.

Rey’s jaw had dropped, and she’d stared at him in horror, stunned into silence, no words coming, and he’d realised what he’d done, and they’d both flushed, his cheeks _burning_ in punishment for his stupidity. He’d dropped his eyes to the table in the vain hope she would think he _wasn’t_ thinking about her tits.

“Sorry,” he’d choked out.

She hadn’t said anything, didn’t say anything for the rest of lunch, and in the days that followed he noticed her chest become shaped by hard bra cups that just looked artificial on her. He’d done that to her. He didn’t quite understand why, but he felt bad. He couldn’t say anything about it though, not try and have a conversation about her tits again. He tried to minimise his oafishness when he saw it coming at least.

He doesn’t say anything now. If she’s waiting for the others, they can wait in comfortable silence.

“Have a date for prom?” she asks, still not looking at him.

Ben’s heart lurches, a tumble of hope, panic, mortification, self-loathing. “No. You?” She’s just making conversation. Prom is two weeks away, and the only thing anyone talks about anymore. Ben doesn’t want to talk about it. As if _he_ could get up the nerve to ask somebody. As if they would say yes, and mean it. He doesn’t even know who he would ask. Anyone he wants to ask would say no and beyond them... He’s been imagining he’ll just go as a group, with Poe and Finn and whoever else. Split the cost of the limo. And if the couples split off to dance or whatever, well he can always make himself scarce by the punch bowl or take his dad’s flask into the AV room.

Rey shakes her head, her freckles somehow still standing out on her tanned skin. He wonders how she got so tanned in their dreary shithole of a town. It marks her out as coming from Somewhere Else. Ben, vampire-pale, fits in to the point of blurring into the background.

“Wanna go with me?” she says.

Ben looks at her, and she looks away, squinting down the hall. He guesses she doesn’t want anyone to hear. Fair enough. He looks down and adjusts his bag on his shoulder.

“Sure.” He isn’t going to get a better offer – he can’t_ imagine _a better offer – and even if she’s only asking to close the loop since her best friend is definitely going with his best friend, he isn’t going to say no.

“Cool.”

She pushes off the wall of lockers and walks away.

Ben is left to think about it. He decides he should probably buy their tickets, but beyond that, how much is he supposed to organise? Is he supposed to get her a corsage? Is he supposed to match his tux to her dress?

Two days later he taps her on the shoulder with a pencil in the science lab. She turns around, spinning on the round stool. The teacher is not paying attention; they’re supposed to be doing an experiment on leaves or some shit. “I’m gonna buy prom tickets today.”

She nods. “Cool.” She is not meeting his eyes.

“Do you have a dress yet?”

She frowns a little and shakes her head. “Saturday, I’ll get one.”

“Okay.” She doesn’t volunteer anything so he’s a little lost. “I was just gonna wear, like… black suit, white shirt.”

“Okay.”

“If you tell me what colour your dress is, I can… get you something.”

Finally her eyes flash up to his. “You don’t have to do that.”

He’s a little taken back by her vehemence. “Okay.” He’s been slapped back into his place, clearly. He leans back and their conversation is over.

She doesn’t tell him the colour of her dress. He doesn’t have her number. Poe organises the limo, giving them all a time to be ready by so they can all be picked up in turn. He goes to a store in town for his tux with his parents, and they are insufferable. His mom keeps fluffing at him, plucking at his collar, at his hair, reminiscing about when he was a baby. His dad reminisces about before he was married, his prom, his date, the girls he slept with in high school. Neither of them ask if Ben has a date and he doesn’t tell them. If they think he’s a hopeless case, he doesn’t want to have to explain that his date is not a _date_, not a girl who _likes_ him, just a friend who was going to be sharing their limo anyway so why not, right?

His parents fight. Ben used to want a sibling, to split the burden of their sniping, but now he thinks they’d just fight twice as much. Ben looks at corsages, and his mom comes over to coo at them as if nothing happened. She gets him a buttonier, and he slips in a corsage to match. It’s a mix of red, pink, and orange flowers, with little white… balls on stalks. It’s not very Rey, but most girls wear red or pink, right? And it’s not like there are black and grey corsages.

The day comes without him and Rey really talking about it.

He suffers and squirms through pictures for his mother, almost running out of the house when he hears the limo honk outside. Poe is the only one inside. Rey is at Finn’s house, so one more stop and everyone is there. Rey climbs in after Finn and sits next to Ben. There really is no elegant way to get into a limo. They all have to bend double at the waist, and Ben is the worst, so he stays by the door.

Rey’s dress has thin straps that go over her shoulders and hangs straight down her body. It’s pink, he thinks. It has a layer of some gauzy material that is pink that covers a silky layer that is purple, which he supposes is the dress itself. It is very not-Rey. Her hair is undone, and she is wearing glittery make-up and red lipstick, all very foreign to him, and suddenly he is sweating. Normally Rey has a chill, casual vibe, almost to the point of rejecting everything that is not chill and casual, but now she looks like… like she is trying to look like other girls. Like a Barbie or something, and it screams high hopes and expectations and Ben knew this was going to be a mistake. He can’t pull this off, not with his hair and his ears and his face. He can’t dance, either. His skin, not so good. Normally he can obscure it all with hoodies and an attitude like he’s not trying and doesn’t care, sinking into the background as best he can at six-foot-two, but there is no way to look like you’re not trying in a tuxedo, so instead he looks like he tried and failed.

Rey is wearing strappy white heels. Rey would never wear heels. He is so fucked. He has ruined her entire night, he just knows it.

Finn explores the limo, pressing things and opening things, and Poe looks on as if it’s the most magical thing he’s ever seen. Ben wonders when is the right time to give Rey her corsage. She hasn’t seen the box next to his thigh on his other side, he thinks. She certainly hasn’t said anything. He can’t hide it once they get out though, it won’t fit in his pocket. In the end he just moves it from beside him to beside her. He doesn’t say anything, and contemplates looking out of the window, but he can’t quite bring himself to miss her reaction. If it’s bad, he wants to know.

Rey looks down at it, confused. She looks at him, gleans nothing, picks it up.

Poe notices. “Is that a corsage? Ben, you smoothie! Good thinking, none of us would have remembered.” He winks at him.

Finn moves closer to peer into the box. “Aw, pretty!”

“Sorry you have to go to prom with a bunch of guys, Rey,” Poe continues.

“It’s okay,” she mumbles, prising the box open. She lifts out the flowers, and Ben can see that it doesn’t match her dress. It’s the wrong pink, and the orange-sherbert-ice-cream colour clashes with the purple silk. He hates himself. Rey glances at his buttonier, which matches so she’s probably thinking everyone will know who bought her that monstrosity, and starts trying to affix the corsage to her thin strap, just at the first swell of her breast.

“I think it goes on your wrist,” he mutters.

“Oh.” She finds the band and wrestles it on. “Sorry.”

Ben has felt like a bystander most of his life, so it’s easy to let Poe carry the conversation now, and watch Finn prod a real emotion out of Rey, teasing her until she slaps him in the arm and they start play-fighting. That’s the real Rey. Ben looks out of the window. He couldn’t do that for her.

They arrive at their high school, and he can already hear music coming from the gym. Rey shivers and folds her arms around herself, and Ben wants to put his arm around her, offer her his heat – his heart on a plate, frankly – but he does nothing. He just puts his hands in his pockets and they walk in.

Ben hands over their tickets. Poe puts his hand in the small of Finn’s back. Ben’s hands go back in his pockets.

Inside looks like hell. Everyone he goes to high school with, and therefore hates to varying degrees, is unrecognizable in a sea of formal wear, framed by white and silver balloons. A stage has been set up with a DJ, and Ben picks out the teachers chaperoning, looking either bored or militantly vigilant. They all stop for a second, overwhelmed and disoriented.

“Ooh, food!” Poe drags Finn over to the catering table and Ben and Rey follow as a safe option.

There are bowls of chips and popcorn and other stuff Ben has no appetite for mixed in with big bowls of punch. Poe happily helps himself, sampling all down the table. He hands Finn a cup with a grin. Ben wishes it came that easily to him.

He decides to at least try. “Do you want…?” he says to Rey, gesturing with his elbow.

“Okay.”

He pours her a cup with the big metal ladle (Why? Why a big ladle? Has humanity not moved past ladles in the twenty-first century?) and spills the pink sugar-water over the rim of the small paper cup, but she doesn’t say anything, accepting it and taking a sip. She’s painted her nails. She never paints her nails.

“Thanks.” Her eyes skim around the room, the writhing sea of seniors, and don’t land on him.

“Let’s dance!” Poe announces, and hauls Finn away.

Ben opens his mouth to say something but they’re out of earshot. He looks back at Rey, stuck with her now, or she’s stuck with him.

“Wanna sit?” she asks, nodding at the bleachers.

Ben has never wanted anything more. They abandon the food and drink, giving up for lost any semblance of enjoying this torturous rite of teenage passage, and find a corner of wooden bench to slump on. There are few enough people that Ben can lean back and rest his elbows on the bench behind. He feels the performance of it all drop away, and it is just him and Rey like normal, even if she does smell like hairspray and perfume. He sighs, relaxing.

She hears him and cuts him a sharp glance, fiddling with the rim of her cup. “Thanks for being my date,” she says, but she doesn’t sound exactly happy.

He laughs at the whole situation, her thanking _him_. “Thanks for being mine.”

She’s quiet again for a moment before saying, “They look happy, don’t they?”

He looks out at where Poe and Finn are dancing. Finn is a good dancer, it turns out. Poe looks too distracted by him to do much more than try to hold on. “Yeah, they do.” It occurs to him what she might be trying to say. “Sorry, I’m not much of a dancer.”

She shrugs. “It’s okay, neither am I.”

They sit there for a few more minutes, talking about class and teachers and homework as if a literally once-in-a-lifetime defining moment is not happening around them, until they are set upon by Rose Tico and her friends.

“Oh my god, Rey, you’re here!” She mountaineers up the bleachers, holding up her skirt, to lock Rey in a hug, squealing in her ear. “Isn’t this amazing!?”

Rey smiles. “Yeah, it is! They did a really good job.”

“You’ve got to dance!”

“I will,” she placates, making no move to do so.

Rose clocks Ben then. “Ben too! Come on!”

He holds up a hand. “Not me, thanks.”

That’s all it takes to get them to forget about him. “Rey, come on! You can’t sit here all night!” Rose is pulling on Rey’s hand. She looks back at Ben, torn, so he smiles and waves her on.

“You go.”

Rey is pulled to her feet and she trots down the bleachers, her heels loud on the wood. The girls form a circle at the edge of the throng and begin to bop and bounce and sway to the beat of some Cobra Starship song. Ben, of course, doesn’t take his eyes off Rey. She stumbles every now and then, losing her balance on the heels. At first she keeps looking back at him, but when Finn finds her, she forgets about him, throwing herself into the music.

Poe leaves them and comes to sit by Ben. He’s untied his bowtie and unbuttoned his collar, and on him it looks so cool Ben wonders if he should do it too. His hair is a little mussed and he’s out of breath.

“Man, I need a drink,” he says, fanning himself idly for a moment before sweeping his hair back into place.

“Mmm,” Ben replies, his eyes riveted to where Finn is making Rey laugh, spinning and spinning her until she wobbles, dizzy, into his arms.

Poe elbows him. “Having fun?”

“Sure.”

“You know, it’s cool you finally worked up the guts to ask Rey out.”

“I didn’t, she asked me.”

“Oh. Well, even better!”

“I don’t think it’s like that.”

“What do you mean? It’s prom!”

“I think she just asked me to, you know… ‘Cause you’d asked Finn and we were obviously gonna go together anyway, so…” Poe is still looking at him blankly, as if he hadn’t made his point yet. “She probably hadn’t been asked yet and knew I wouldn’t have asked anybody, so… She just made it neat. Tied off the loose ends.” He points at himself with his thumb.

Poe grunts, as if he hadn’t considered this. “You think so?”

“Yeah.”

At that moment, the music changes, lights softening for the first slow dance. It’s Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol, a saccharine dirge Ben despises, with lyrics that make him want to rip his ears off, but as the crowd below slot neatly into pairs, Rey turns and looks up the bleachers at him.

“That’s my cue,” Poe says. “If you want my advice, just do it, bro. Don’t make her sit this out. It’s her prom too and you’ve kind of got one job here.” He stands and jogs down the bleachers to take Finn into his arms.

Ben takes a deep breath. Poe is right of course. It’s Rey’s only prom, and he is her only date, and he can make an ass of himself for one or two dances if it means she won’t have to tell everyone for the rest of her life that she had a horrible prom. He forces himself to his feet and concentrates on where he puts them as he works his way down to her. She is waiting for him when he gets there and, funnily enough, she’s smiling.

“Wanna dance?” he mumbles, even if he’s so nervous he could throw up. He’s not afraid she’ll say no, not when literally everyone else in the room is doing this, but there are worse things that could happen. A drop-down menu scrolls through his head. Much, much worse. At least the song has already reached the first chorus.

Rey doesn’t answer, she just steps into him, her hands going shyly to his shoulders. He can barely feel them there, she is touching him so lightly. Her head almost comes up to his chin now and it’s disorientating to have her taller than usual. He awkwardly rests his sweaty mitts on her hips, and they find a rhythm of swaying from side to side, plenty of room for the Holy Spirit.

Until Rey leans against him, her cheek on his chest.

He thinks of a million things. He wonders if he is sweating, if he smells, if she can hear his heart galloping, and worrying about that does nothing to slow it down. Her hip bones poke into his palms. He wonders if he’s supposed to hold her tighter now, wrap his arms around her back. He wonders if he is taking liberties. His mom’s voice is in his head, telling him to respect women. His dad’s voice is telling him women like to be pushed, teased, led. He wonders if he is supposed to kiss her, if she wants him to. He wonders if what she can feel of him matches up to what she expected, if she likes it, or if she is disappointed. He is easily a million degrees hot. The gauzy top layer of her dress sticks to his palm when he tries to adjust one hand, that was a mistake. He bets his hands are leaving sweat patches on her dress.

And that’s not all.

He can feel her breasts, or he thinks he can. He sort of can. There’s definitely something stopping them from being stomach-to-stomach. She is not flat like he is, she has curves. Right at his fingertips is the beginning of her ass, and he is desperately ordering his hands not to squeeze, not on pain of death. He can smell her, the combination of smells almost overwhelming: hairspray, perfume, make-up, deodorant, skin, Rey. He hopes his face isn’t doing weird things other people can see over the top of her head. He has no shelter.

He looks around at the other couples for ideas of what he should be doing. No help. There are couples who are perfectly entwined, looking blissful. There are couples holding each other at arm’s length, staring determinedly away from each other. Hands are on hips, shoulders, backs, necks, asses. There doesn’t seem to be a consensus.

Ah, fuck it. He’s eighteen, she’s eighteen. This might be his only chance. He lifts his hands, freeing them from her dress, and in that instant she stiffens, stopping moving with him so he ends up pushing into her for a moment, but the command has been given and his hands come back, landing high on her waist and stroking down back to where they were, and he finds the exact spot because it is still hot from his skin. At her narrowest point, his thumbs almost meet over her stomach. Rey relaxes and resumes rotating in what they’re calling a dance. She doesn’t pull away or hit him, so he does it again, lifting his hands to her ribs this time, and he knows he is pushing it, he knows her breasts must be around there somewhere, and as he wraps his fingers around her, he feels her breath stutter. It is startlingly animal, to feel her breathe like that, under his hands. He doesn’t hug his parents anymore, and he’s never had a pet (too dirty for his mother). He is not used to feeling the life in another body, but he can feel Rey’s in hers.

He realises he has stopped ‘dancing’ because she looks up at him.

“Ben?” she almost breathes.

He just stares down at her dumbly, feeling her breathe, feeling her _burn_ under his hands, achingly aware that a twitch away from his thumb is her breast. An evil, intruding thought makes him map his fingers up her back until he touches skin. No bra. He could touch her. It would be so easy.

He is staring down at her face, and for a minute he forgets she can see him too, and they are in fact staring at each other. Maybe there’s something on his, because her expression changes. Shy, unsure, then almost pained, and slowly she lifts up and he- he doesn’t think- he doesn’t realise what she is doing before-

Before her lips touch his.

And Ben? Ben fucking _loves_ this song. This is the best song ever. This song has done him the biggest solid of his life.

He doesn’t manage to kiss her back, standing stunned like a dumbass instead. He didn’t even close his eyes. But Rey only pulls back a little bit to check his eyes before leaning in again and that, _that_ is a kissing face. Her eyes drop to his lips and her eyes grow hooded and she tilts her head and it’s like every movie he’s ever seen, a cue that’s impossible to miss, it’s _instinct_. He meets her halfway, bumping into her, but his lips are where they should be, against hers, soft, flexing, and he flexes too, and the kiss, it means something. It says something like he never thought it could. It races through him, _I like you, I like you_, and he’s not sure which of them is saying it or if they’re saying it together or in answer to each other.

Rey likes him, at least a little.

Ben likes her, a whole lot more than a little.

It makes him feel _tall_, and not in the way he normally does, when he has to slouch in class so the person behind him can see the board, or duck his head in doorways, or resign himself to the shoes he likes not being stocked in his size. This is a good tall, an adult tall, not a teenage tall. She makes him feel like he’s king of the world.

The slow song ends, 50 Cent comes on in its place. People will notice they’re kissing, probably catcall and make a thing of it, but he doesn’t let her go. Her hands come up to cup his face and wow, that’s- He likes that. Even as he worries about her touching his ears, feeling where he might have missed a spot shaving, he likes how it makes him feel wanted.

He wants to put his tongue in her mouth.

And that’s the last straw. It could have been any number of things. He was lucky to get this far, with her pressed up against him like that and thinking about her tits, but somehow, it’s the thought of pressing his tongue to hers that sends a sudden torrential pulse of blood to his cock which springs to life immediately, with no consideration for the time or place. A flag couldn’t have gone up faster, it did not pass Go, it just filled, hard, and he felt it hit her stomach.

“Guh!” He stumbles back, wiping his mouth with one hand, trying to cover his friendly dick with the other. “Sorry, I-” He wants to throw himself into a vat of molten steel like in Terminator 2, except he wouldn’t bother with the thumbs up. He wants to give her the satisfaction of his immediate death with no remains.

She pushes herself up to him, grabbing his wrist with both hands, and staring into his face as if she is about to save his life. As he tries to fall away and she stays with him, he realises she is using her body as a shield, protecting him from the rest of their year. He stops fighting, slowly standing straight, his cock catching and lifting the skirt of her dress an inch or two. She doesn’t even blink. She holds his eyes with a look he can’t read.

“It’s okay,” she whispers.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, because his cockhead is somewhere between her legs and _pulsing_, even through all their clothes, and it’s making him picture her naked. He lets her pull his hands to his sides.

“Don’t be,” she says, glancing at his mouth again, and that’s not helping either. She tears her eyes away to the bleachers behind them. “Do you want to sit?”

“Uhhhh…” He scans the crowd behind them, trying to see if anyone is looking.

“I’ll sit in your lap. No one will see,” Rey offers.

He looks back at her and he can’t say no. He swallows, nods. With his hands on her waist, he takes the few steps backward, feels the bench hit his calves, and sits. She smoothly hitches sideways onto his thighs, and he wraps his arms around her waist, pulling her to him. The bench is too low, his knees too high, and she slides down onto his cock, making him groan. It’s not like she’s straddling him (he thinks about it) or has her ass to him (he thinks about that too) but it’s pressure and it’s _Rey_ and he can’t help it. He thinks about how she’s not wearing a bra, and drops his forehead to her shoulder, warm and slightly sticky. When he opens his eyes, he can’t see down her dress, it’s too tight, but he can see where her breasts are. He wants to kiss her again. He wants to kiss her now, like this. It would be nothing to press his lips to her arm, her shoulder. He wants to turn her to face him, get her straddling him, and slide her down his thighs to grind on his cock while he face-fucks her with his tongue.

God, he’s such a pervert.

Rey doesn’t say anything, she just looks out at the other students, tapping her toes and moving her shoulders to the music. Does she really not mind that he’s got a huge boner begging at her thigh right now? Maybe she’s really experienced. Maybe she’s seen it all. That thought kind of depresses him, if she doesn’t even care.

It gets worse. Poe and Finn come to investigate.

“Everything okay?” Poe says, throwing himself down on the bench beside Ben.

Ben lifts his head, plasters on a smile. “Yep, great.”

“You two look friendly,” Finn observes.

Rey shrugs and leans her back against his chest as if declaring her allegiance. Now there’s no way they’ll see what’s happening in his pants. She’s saving him. She covers his hands on her stomach with her own. “It’s prom,” she says, as if that explains it.

Finn grins at her, as if it did actually mean something to him. “Wanna dance some more?”

Ben tightens his hold on her, desperate.

“In a minute,” she says.

She’s an angel. An angel.

“Okay. Poe?”

Poe stands, but he’s still looking at Ben. “You sure you feel okay?”

“Absolutely peachy,” Ben promises with another rictus grimace of a reassuring smile. He’s not selling it. He’s acting weird, he knows. He would never normally say that.

Poe raises an eyebrow, but Finn takes his hand and drags him onto the dancefloor.

Ben lets out the breath he was holding. “Rey… Thank you…”

She doesn’t turn to face him as she says “Do you wanna get out of here? Go somewhere?”

Ben has no idea what she’s taking about. “Where?”

She shrugs. “Empty classroom. Sports field.”

The sports field? Why? But to be honest… He would much rather be alone with her somewhere quiet than stay here. “Sure.”

The problem in his pants hasn’t dissipated, but she gets up and takes his hand and they make a speedy, sneaky exit, quickly finding themselves alone in the halls and Ben sighs in relief as Like A G6 fades away.

He suspects they will not be alone for long. Other couples will definitely be sneaking off to hook up, and chaperones will be patrolling to stop them, but Rey is holding his hand as best she can, his palm too broad for her to really get a grip, and he can’t bring himself to say anything.

She quickly tugs him to the nearest exit, and before he knows it, they are walking across the football field. It’s deserted, and the cold air feels good after the heat of the gym, but Rey continues to lead him to the perimeter fence.

“Uh, Rey, where are we going?” His dress shoes slip in the wet grass.

She stops and turns back to him, as if realising maybe he’s not on board with this. “Just somewhere quiet.” When he continues to hesitate, she adds, “We don’t have to. I just don’t want anyone to find us.”

“Find us doing… what?”

She flinches back a bit, her eyes widening and her mouth opening with words stuck in her throat, and she looks down, pushing her hair behind her ear. He waits for her to answer, her mouth opening and closing a few times. Finally she quietly chokes out “Don’t people usually have sex on prom night?”

_What the fuuuuuuu_\- So because he got a boner, she thinks he wants to have sex? Well, he can see why she would think that. But he doesn’t like this, the way she seems to be just going along with it, decision made. Maybe most guys wouldn’t care, but Ben pictured a little more romance for his first time.

“Actually I think that’s probably a myth. People who have sex on prom night are probably dating, right? They’re probably already having sex, or would anyway. Just because it’s prom doesn’t mean _we_ have to.”

She lets his hand slide from hers. She’s still staring at the ground. “Oh. Sorry.”

He sighs and pushes his hand through his hair. He looks around. Was she really about to lead him into the woods to have sex? He can’t deny there’s an appeal to the idea, sex with Rey, and it’s doing nothing to kill his boner, but damn. He wouldn’t make her do that. This is supposed to be the most magical night of her life, so far at least.

“Let’s sit down.” He turns to the bleachers and lets her follow at her own pace. When she sits next to him, she folds up so small, her knees up to her chest and her arms around herself, he can’t help but take his jacket off and nervously drape it over her shoulders. She doesn’t throw it off, but pulls it around her instead.

He looks at the stars.

“Did you really want to have sex with me in the woods behind the school football field?” he asks, glancing at her, but she doesn’t reply, staring determinedly at her toes sticking out of her shoes, painted pink. He sighs. He’s hardly in a position to lecture but… if she needs someone to say it… “Rey, sex should be with people you care about, not just… a random prom date. It should be right.”

He doesn’t know how to articulate what he’s trying to say, just that she deserves better. He imagines at least a bed for her, if not candles and rose petals. He wants her to do it with a boyfriend, someone who cares about her at least as much as he does. He can’t really imagine someone caring about her _more_ than he does, but if it’s possible she should have that. She should have someone she’s in love with, someone she _yearns _for.

He expects her to nod, sagely accepting his message, and then they’ll go back inside. She can dance with her friends, he’ll prop her up on the slow dances, and then they’ll all go home and maybe in a few weeks she’ll have a boyfriend and he’ll know who is going to give her what she wants.

Instead her face crumbles and tips forward, and she sobs once with a quiet squeak, her shoulders hitching under his jacket.

Instantly he’s reaching out for her. Somehow it’s easier to put his hands on his jacket than it would be to touch her without it. “Woah, Rey, hey, it’s okay, don’t cry, it’ll happen, you’ll find someone-”

She sobs again, louder this time, as if what he said just made it worse, and he’s really got nowhere to go from there. He presses his lips together and rubs her back. “I didn’t mean to make you cry,” he says, his tone almost sullen. He feels like shit, stupid idiot, making his date cry on prom night and he doesn’t even know why.

It’s painful to watch her force her crying back like she’s had to do it many times before but it’s still not easy, like wrestling an alligator. “But you kissed me,” she whimpers, her voice pinched, her sniffs louder than her words.

Actually, she kissed him, but even he’s not enough of a dumbass to say that. “I didn’t mean to give you the wrong impression,” he says instead. He didn’t mean to make her think he expected anything.

Her lip wobbles and it looks like she’s going to break again, but she covers her mouth with her fingers and turns away from him, and few deep breaths later she’s got it under control.

“Do you want to go back?” he asks, thinking of Finn and Poe who would definitely do better than him at this.

She shakes her head.

He’s got nothing, so he just sits back and waits for her to tell him what she needs.

After several minutes, she turns back to face out across the field, leaning against the stone bench behind them. Her make-up’s a mess, she’s not going to be happy about that.

“Why did you say yes when I asked you to be my date?” she says, her voice dull and defeated.

He laughs, but then she never did seem to see herself like he did. “I wasn’t going to say no.”

“What does that mean?”

He faces out to the field, his hands in his lap. “Every guy wants a beautiful prom date.”

When he glances at her again, she is looking at him, her head turned to _stare_ at him in fact. “You think I’m beautiful?”

He shrugs, trying to brush it off. “Yeah. I know you don’t, but you are, Rey. I think you’re probably the prettiest girl in school.”

“Then why don’t you like me?”

“I like you,” he says, confused.

“Not like I like you.”

“What?”

“If you think I’m pretty, why don’t you want to have sex with me? I mean, I’m not asking you to date me or anything,” she looks down, almost mumbling through her pouting swollen lips. “Don’t boys want to have sex? Do you think I’d really suck at it or something?”

“I… I don’t think you’d suck at it. I think I’d suck at it.” She was going to make him say it, wasn’t she? But he would, for her.

She’s looking at him again. “I don’t mind if you suck,” she whispers.

He snorts. “Yeah, right.”

“I don’t.”

“Maybe I didn’t make my point earlier. You deserve better. You should have someone you love, in a- in a comfortable setting.” He sweeps his hand out at the football field. “You should have someone who knows…” _how not to hurt you, how to make you come, how to make you happy._ “What he’s doing.”

“But I want you,” she almost whines, and her lip trembles again.

“Just because I’m here.”

“No!” she objects, and it comes out wheedling.

“No?”

“I want you! I don’t want anyone else!”

Ben does an aural double-take. “Wait, what? What’s going on here? Do you- Are you saying you… like me?”

“I already said that!”

“Did you?” He tries to replay their conversation in his head but it’s all messed up with double meanings. One truth surfaces: Rey has literally never given him any indication she likes him. She mostly talks to Finn. She only sits opposite him at lunch because Finn sits opposite Poe.

“…Yeah…” Her voice is small.

“_Why?_”

She shrugs. “I just feel like… we’re the same. You chill me out. I can just relax and be myself around you, and the way you hate everything makes me laugh. I kind of hate everything too. Finn doesn’t get it. He’s good at making me smile, but I don’t wanna smile all the time. Sometimes I just wanna feel bad, and you make me feel like feeling bad is… okay.”

Ben rubs his head. A pressure is blooming behind his eyes like a headache, but it doesn’t hurt, it just feels like the weight of his own stupidity. “So when you asked me out, that wasn’t just because it was convenient.”

“What? No.”

“And when you kissed me… And when you wanted to have sex with me, that was because you wanted to?”

Rey didn’t answer, but she didn’t correct him either, just kicking against the stone bench with a scraping sound.

“Fuuuuuuuck, Rey. I had no idea. So when I said it should be with someone you like, you thought that meant…. _Fuck_. Rey. I wasn’t trying to say I don’t like you, I wanted you to have better. I didn’t want you to feel pressured because it’s prom. Is that why you were crying? Because you thought I was turning you down?”

“You did turn me down.”

“Yeah, but not like _that_. Not because I wanted to.”

“You didn’t?” She shakes her head. “I’m getting confused.”

Ben decides it’s time to nut up. The prettiest, coolest girl he’s ever seen has just told him she likes him, after he made her cry at her own prom, and if he fucks this up he doesn’t deserve to live. Fuck his low self-esteem. He scoots along the bench until he’s sitting right beside her, their thighs pressed together. He takes her hand. “Rey, let’s date.”

She gasps and it’s the best thing he’s ever heard. “What?”

“You want to, don’t you? Let me take you out a few times. I don’t think I want to… lose my virginity to a girl who doesn’t want to be with me. You want that too, right? I want to be your boyfriend.”

She’s staring at him, eyeliner drying on her cheeks and her lipstick smudged. He almost doesn’t recognise her, because now she’s not detached, not acting tough. Her mouth distorts for a moment, tears coming, but then she nods. “Okay.”

“Okay.” He dares something more, putting his arm around her shoulders and pulling her into his side.

After a moment, she curses “Man, I shaved my legs for this!”

And he laughs because it sounds so much more like the Rey he knows, the Rey he is now dating. “I can still feel them up if it would make you feel better.”

She swings her foot up onto the bench in front, silently offering. Ben reaches out and flips her long skirt away from her ankle, then slides his hand up the inside of her calf. He meant to make a joke out of it, but neither of them are laughing. He squeezes, and part of him (he knows which part) yells for him to keep going, slide his hand up her thigh, feel between her legs, push his fingers into her, make her wet. Push her down on the bench and make her come. He takes his hand away and Rey lets out a shaky breath.

They would have time for that later.

But he does kiss her again.

Eventually they go back to the gym, after Ben stands posted outside the girls’ bathroom while Rey fixes her make-up. Poe gives him shit-eating grins the whole night, but he dances with Rey, and even jumps around for a few of the fast songs. The air of expectation is gone, now he knows she feels stupid in the dress and heels and make-up and hair. He thinks maybe it’s an unacknowledged universal truth, that everyone feels a little stupid at prom.

In the end though, he can’t pretend he didn’t have a good time. It may, in fact, have been the best night of his life after all. His parents are waiting up for him, and he can see the relief on their faces when he tells them as much.

School is pretty much the same. He and Rey go out for burgers and fries, or milkshakes or whatever. They go shopping. They go to the arcade and the movies. They study for exams. It’s easy. They like all the same things, it’s almost miraculous. She’s still the coolest person he knows. And now they have something else in common: kissing in his dad’s old Falcon.

Now he knows she likes it when he gets hard around her, and she knows he likes it when she doesn’t wear a bra. She straddles his boner and puts her hands under his shirt to shyly tease his stomach, and slips her hands under his collar to squeeze his shoulders. He, being a bit more desperate maybe, puts his hands under her shirt at almost the first opportunity and tenderly, carefully thumbs her small breasts. He still can’t believe she lets him, let alone likes it, but her breath always hitches and sometimes she moans his name and now he knows what it smells like when she’s wet through her jeans in the closed-in air of the car.

He learns that Rey is being fostered, and that her foster dad is a cunt, but also that she doesn’t want to take too much off Ben. He’s able to buy her one ‘just because’ present, but she doesn’t like it when he does it again. She lets him pay for dinner every other time with extreme reluctance, going halves otherwise. He makes up excuses and stupid bets for him to lose to keep her fed, dressed. Her prom dress had been from Goodwill. He tells her it was beautiful anyway. She tells him she hated it, she had only done all that for him. He agrees he prefers her in jeans, then kisses her senseless and says some dirty shit about her tits while she gasps in his ear.

Graduation, and then the summer.

The first night his parents are away, he invites her over. They both know what’s going to happen when she comes over that night. He showers and puts fresh sheets on the bed. His mom will notice but fuck her. He’s bought condoms, not from a store but from the machine in a restaurant bathroom. When he answers the door in sweatpants and a T-shirt, she has a backpack hanging on one shoulder.

He steps back to let her in, feeling electrified with anticipation. He’s nervous but, surprisingly for him, he’s mostly just eager. Maybe because it’s Rey, and she’s never made him feel stupid or too much or too little, and she laughs at the worst things about him and seems to like everything he does.

“Are your parents really gone?” she whispers as if they might hear.

“Mm-hmm.” He bends down to kiss her hello, and he doesn’t straighten all the way up afterwards, staying low with her. He looks into her beautiful hazel eyes. “Can we go upstairs? I don’t think I can wait.”

She licks her lips and nods, so he takes her hand and leads her up the stairs to his room. Maybe he should offer her a drink or something first but… honestly he can’t wait. He can’t sit down and focus on anything else, not when he knows this is coming. He’ll order them pizza and they can watch a movie later, but the anticipation is killing him, he has to get this over with first.

She slings off her bag as he pulls her to his bed. She looks around. She’s never been to his house before, mainly because he’s keeping her a secret from his parents. He doesn’t want them to comment on it, he doesn’t trust them not to ruin it somehow. He’s never tidied his room like this for his mom, but some things he couldn’t hide, like the band posters on his walls, his wardrobe that doesn’t quite close, the sci-fi figurines on his shelves.

But he doesn’t give Rey time to look at his embarrassing childhood stuff, sitting her on the bed and kissing her on his knees. He doesn’t know if he’s a good kisser, but he’s familiar with it now, and Rey has never said anything. He’s already half-hard just from knowing what they’re about to do.

Rey puts her hand on his cheek and kisses him back with a small breathy moan. He doesn’t understand it, but she is just as horny for him as he is for her, as she’s proven on several occasions.

He breaks away to kiss down her neck and talk to her. “Is there anything you want? Have you thought about this?”

“Yeah…”

“Yeah?” He likes to hear that, maybe he’ll ask her about it later so he can imagine her touching herself to thoughts of him. “So?”

“I don’t mind, um… I don’t wanna do doggy-style… I want to do it in missionary, is that okay?”

“Fine, perfect.” He hasn’t pictured doing it any other way, their first time. His hands work at the hem of her shirt, slowly gathering it up, baring her stomach. Her breath comes faster and he knows she’s realised what he’s about to do, but she doesn’t stop him, so he pulls her shirt over her head and then she is naked from the waist up.

He groans at the sight of her and dives in, not to her breasts but to her, kissing her mouth, cheek, neck, shoulders, and lifting both hands to kiss them too, because he wants her to know he’s not just about getting to see her tits for the first time. He cares about her as a whole. “Rey… Beautiful…” he tells her, and she whimpers.

He knows she’s shy but braving it out, and he’s had his fingers playing with her under her shirt a dozen times, so he touches her the same way now, giving her what she’s used to, and with a sigh she relaxes. Her shoulders curve and drop her breasts into his hands. It’s different this time because he can see them on her, and it cuts straight to the centre of him, like a weed that grows roots through concrete, it will always be in him.

She is thin, he knew that. She doesn’t look bony as such, but he can see her bones, in her shoulders, her elbows, her collarbones, her ribs. He can see her frame, as if she was an example in an art textbook.

He presses a kiss to her chest, then another lower down. Her skin smells sweet, and burns so warm. Her tan covers her and his hands are white against her. He hopes she can’t feel how he is shaking. “Is this okay?” he asks.

“Yes,” she answers immediately, swaying into him minutely.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing but he knows what he wants. Her pushes her breast to his mouth, feeling its softness against his lips before opening his mouth to suck like he would suck on her neck, and then flick his tongue against her nipple. She gasps and her hands tighten against the edge of his mattress and then it is her turn to shake. He watches her face but her eyes are closed. She doesn’t tell him to stop, so he keeps going, trying it again, and soon he is making love to her breasts, switching from side to side indecisively while her fingers rub the back of his head and her hips rock against his bed. His mouth is open and he licks and kisses and sucks and learns all of her, his hands tugging and holding and supporting her.

Eventually it gets to be too much for her. He could carry on, probably until the end of time, but she begs “Ben, _please_,” so he stops. He pulls away and meets her eyes, and even while she looks distraught, like she could cry, there is still their connection there. He knows it’s because her cunt is aching and she can’t wait any longer without being touched, that she has thought about this every night for months, just like he has.

He pulls his shirt over his head and she kicks off her shoes, rearranging herself on the bed so she is lying in the middle as if it is a sacrificial altar, and she undoes her jeans and starts working them down. He kneels over her and helps pull them off. There’s a part of him that can’t believe this is happening, that he is kneeling over her and she is almost naked except for a pair of pink panties with a little black bow, and he is shirtless with a boner in grey sweatpants, and neither of them are anything but eager, because it’s _them_. Somehow, they go together so smoothly, as if they were made for each other.

Rey pulls the tie from her hair so it doesn’t dig in, and fluffs her hair over his pillow.

“I love you,” Ben blurts out. They haven’t said it yet, but he thinks it’s been implied.

“I love you too,” she replies without a hitch, no friction even in this.

Ben looks down at her body. He knows he should do more foreplay, until she’s crazy with it, because it’s her first time too, but where to start? She is so beautiful all over. His eyes fall on the wet patch of her pink panties and it’s like a compass finding north. He nudges her knees further apart and pushes his face there, his mouth flooding at the scent and the feel and the knowledge that this is Rey’s pussy, finally, just a thin layer of cotton away. He feels the lips of her spread under his nose, his mouth, and he licks.

Rey is writhing, one hand on his head, unsure what is happening since he hasn’t taken her panties off but is giving her head anyway. Her breathing is going crazy, and her thighs are shaking, and he knows she is being so brave to let him do this to her. He licks her again, sucks. He can’t get enough, he is being driven by some instinct, some brain chemical that he has no control over, ridden hard by lust. It makes him twist one finger under her panties, notching then pushing into her, smoothly bottoming out, desperate. She is _soaked_. She is _burning_ hot, and it _rips_ through him, his gut _hurts_, and he has to dip his head for a moment to catch his breath. His dick has never been this hard, it is like it has found its life’s purpose, seen El Dorado.

“Hurts?” he pants.

“It’s okay,” she replies, and her voice is higher than he’s ever heard it, he’s never heard her sound like that, and it makes him sit up and look at her. He regains a little sanity, and he slides his finger out, then slowly back in. They haven’t touched each other like this before and he watches her face carefully.

“I love you,” he says.

She smiles, ribbing him just a little. “You said that already.”

Her voice is so breathy, and he feels her get wetter around his finger. “I’m saying it again.”

“I love you,” she repeats, and he pulls his hand away. Holding her eyes, he sucks his finger clean. He’s never tasted anything like her before, he can’t describe it. He reaches for her waistband, hooking it, his fingers brushing the soft skin of her hips, and he pulls them down and off.

Her hair is trimmed, thin and wispy. She is totally naked. It’s like a sledgehammer between his eyes. If the last thing a person sees is forever branded onto their retinas, he could die right now and be perfectly happy. He doesn’t know what to do. He wants to love her as an action, not a feeling, as if love was a paint that welled in his heart and he could cover every inch of her body in it while she giggled and squirmed. He runs his hands from her knees, down her thighs, over her hips, her waist, to tweak her nipples again just because he can’t resist when his hands get there.

“You’re amazing,” he whispers.

She reaches for his cock, her arm not quite long enough. “I wanna touch you too.”

All he can see of her pussy is a wet pink wrinkle. He shuffles closer, getting between her bent legs to nudge them a little further open, and he thinks he can see her entrance maybe.

She reaches into his sweats and wraps her hand around him, and his breath punches out of him on an embarrassing whine. She squeezes gently, her fingers and thumb testing and exploring his skin. “Wow, it’s so hard,” she muses.

“’Course it is,” he grits out.

She strokes him, and he can tell when she switches from satisfying her curiosity to trying to get a reaction out of him because her eyes jump from his crotch to his face. Her fingers notch against his swollen head, then drop their grip to feel that out instead, tickling over him, tracing his slit, and he almost loses it all there. He could cry, he could collapse, he could pass out. His dick might as well be in a vice for the amount of sensation racing through him right then.

“Does it hurt?” she asks idly.

He shakes his head, sweaty hair flinging.

“Is it even gonna fit?”

He catches her eyes. “It’ll fit,” he promises, based on nothing but the fact that life is not that cruel, not even to him.

She lifts him out of his sweats and her eyes go wide. Her expression is gratifying, and he lets her look. She pushes his pants to mid-thigh to see all of him, and he lets her explore. It’s only fair, but still he can’t stand more than a minute of it. He reaches for a condom from the three he left in plain view on top of his nightstand. She watches him slide it on, her breath puffing between her wet lips, her chin almost on her chest. With a twist of his body, he works his way between her legs and lets himself down on top of her, and for a moment they are skin to skin, heartbeat to heartbeat. Her feet work his sweats down his legs and he kicks them off. It is so strange to be eye to eye with her like this, with her head on his pillow, his hips framed by her legs, her breasts against his chest. It’s perfect in the way nothing has ever been perfect before. He feels like a baby sea turtle finally making it to water after a short life full of peril and strife and dry fucking sand. This is what life is supposed to be. She’s perfect. She’s birthday cake. She’s passing his driving test. She’s- she’s- she’s _Rey_. She’s everything to him, and he hopes she can read it in his eyes because the words haven’t been invented yet that won’t shatter under the weight of what he feels for her.

He kisses her, lets his hair fall onto her face. He kisses her slowly, introducing his tongue with a wet noise he barely hears anymore because they’ve done this so many times, and there’s no one around to be quiet for so they kiss with open mouths because they like it, they like how gross and visceral and beautiful and raw it is, and they know this about each other without ever having said it.

She reaches down between them to squeeze his cock again and whispers “Please.”

He doesn’t keep her waiting. With her hand to guide him, he lets his hips sink forward, searching, and then her wet heat is at his tip, engulfing him, crushing him, and he groans. “Rey…” he whispers, and he hopes she understands. “Is it okay?”

She pulls her hand back, letting him take it from there, and wraps her arms over his shoulders to hold him to her. “Keep going.” She is breathing so fast, but he pushes in another inch.

He doesn’t think he could go faster if he wanted to, it doesn’t feel like there’s anywhere to go. She rocks her hips up against him and helps him work his cock into her. It takes them a minute, and when he is flush against her – another feeling too perfect to process – they pause to hold each other and tremble. He wishes he could say something but he can’t, it’s all he can do to breathe.

“Rey, I love you, you’re everything to me, I-I-”

She laughs weakly and _God_, how that _feels_, muscles squeezing his tip and pure-heroin-pleasure fluttering up through his whole body. “You’re just saying that ‘cause we’re fucking.”

“No, Rey. No.” He actually forces himself up to look at her face, a Herculean feat under the circumstances. He is aghast that she would think that, though. Doesn’t she _know_? Doesn’t she feel it too? “Do you really think that?”

She doesn’t seem to appreciate his scrutiny but there’s nowhere she can escape to. She turns her head, shaking it, and then he hears a sniffle.

“Are you _crying_?” he asks, appalled. Is he fucking this up too? Does it hurt that much? Is he going to find blood when he pulls out? He doesn’t want that.

“No,” she objects, her voice waterlogged.

He moves to pull out, and she seizes all around him, arms and legs clinging. “Don’t! Please, don’t.”

“Why are you crying?”

“Just…” She glances at him, tears in her eyes. And then it all collapses. “No one’s ever loved me before, and- and I’ve never loved-” The rest doesn’t make it past her crying, her body shaking with sobs.

Ben doesn’t know what to do. She won’t let him out of her and the sensation of her crying on his dick is both better and worse than her laughing. He doesn’t want to fuck her like this, so he just has to stop her crying. “Shh, shh, it’s okay, it’s okay,” he says aimlessly, kissing her tears from her cheeks and doing his best to rock her. With a determined pull of his hips, he gets his cock out of her without separating them anywhere else. He wrestles his arms under her back and rolls them so that she is now on top.

Her crying quiets quickly to sniffles, though he thinks she might be getting his hair wet. Her arms are tight around his neck. “I’m sorry,” she says, muffled.

He strokes her back. “It’s okay.” He supposes if she was going to cry from him penetrating her, he’d rather it be because she felt too loved.

She wipes her nose on his shoulder and he doesn’t even care. Girlfriend privileges. “That was pretty lame, huh? Sorry I fucked up your first time.”

“I don’t consider it fucked up.”

She laughs. “You don’t?”

“No. I don’t consider it over yet.”

Rey pulls back a little to look at him. Her nose is red, as are her eyes. He knows lying on his back like this exposes his ears. She doesn’t even look at them. Instead, she sits up to look behind her at his cock, as if to check that it’s still hard. When she turns back to him, she says “You’re the best, you know that?”

Now it’s his turn to laugh. “For staying hard while my girlfriend cries? Yeah, a real gentleman.”

She shoves him, and smiles shyly. “You know… you could say…you’re a _stand-up_ guy.”

He groans because it’s what she wants, and she laughs, which is what he wants. “Puns? Is that what we’re reduced to now?”

She lies back down, folding her hands on his chest to cushion her chin while she watches his face. “Do you really want to keep going? I haven’t put you off?”

“You haven’t put me off, but… How’s your… you know?”

Her lips twist as she tries to make a smile into a smirk. “My what?”

“You know, this.” He reaches the length of her body, his hand going under her ass to trace the seam of her pussy. He feels her little jump as she twitches on his chest.

“It’s fine.”

“Yeah? I didn’t hurt you?” He’s found what he thinks is her clit, something small and hard in the mess of softness, and he circles it idly to see what effect it has.

Rey’s expression melts, her lips drifting apart, her eyelids drooping. “I told you, I wasn’t crying because of that.”

He’s still not sure it’s right to try to have sex with a girl after she’s been crying, but he lifts his heads and pecks her lips, and if she wants to she’ll kiss him back. She does, soft little things, no tongue, but inside them is an apology, a thank you, an _I still want you_. He’s content to roam her body with his hands, cupping her ass, luxuriating in the endless flow of her perfect skin.

She breaks away. “Ben,” she mews, a look on her face he’s seen before when she wants to go further. He rolls them back to where they were, Rey on her back, him nestled between her thighs.

“Are you sure?” he asks.

She nods.

“You’re not just doing this because you don’t want to disappoint me or something? Because you think you have to?”

She loops her arms around his neck. “Ben, I have been waiting since prom. Please fuck me.”

“Alright, I will _make love_ to you, if you insist.” He sniffs snootily, doing his best lofty expression.

She laughs, but then he has her thigh in his hand and they’re both holding their breath as he tilts his hips and eases into her again. Once he’s in, it’s like their interlude never happened. Lust and awe roar through him, his mouth hanging open as he checks her face, then he moves his hips back just enough to bump into her again, feeling the soft squish. Her eyelids flutter and he kisses her, and keeps kissing her as he starts thrusting, slow and gentle, shallow, until he builds in pace and they’re sweating and gasping and grasping at each other.

It’s incredible. It’s potent. He can’t understand it, how moving his dick in and out of her, with the condom and everything, could feel like this, but it does, and the pleasure is overwhelming, addictive, controlling. He’s instantly a slave to it, to her, and judging by her moans, she feels it too, and that quickly becomes all he cares about, making her come. He jerks into her with a rhythm that comes from somewhere in his spine, not his brain at all, and kisses her mouth and neck whenever he’s got the breath because he still loves her, he loves her more than ever, and he needs her to _know_.

Soon she is saying his name and clawing at his back as if trying to pull him to her but he is already as close as he can get. “Please, please, please,” she whimpers.

“Tell me- Tell me what to do,” he rasps.

She moans, shakes her head, licks the sweat off his throat. Helpful, but he supposes it’s her first time too. If there’s a special angle or something, she won’t know it either, so he just fights his hand down between them and looks for her clit with his thumb. She shouts when he finds it, and he works it quickly. She stiffens in degrees, winding up, and she tightens on his dick, and he is grunting with every thrust as he battles his way in and out, stripping his cock until with a short wail, Rey begins flexing on his dick, seizing.

So that’s what a girl feels like from the inside when she comes. Like a fist grabbing and releasing, as if her body is saying _here, here, come here you fucking bastard_. Ben fucks her through it because it’s not like he can stop, and Rey goes limp. He feels rude, still fucking her after she’s stopped feeling it, but again, it’s not like he can stop. It’s taken him over. So he does his best to focus on coming, not thinking about how he’s going to look or sound, and when he does he gathers her to him and buries his face in her neck and shudders and moans. The sensation of coming inside her, even the fake one of coming into the condom, hits some caveman button in his brain and he can’t believe it, it’s the best thing ever, he’s totally fucking done for. It feels wrong and dirty but so fucking _right_ and perfect, like the planets aligning, and something in his head tells him Rey’s his now, and just for this moment he’ll listen because he’s never heard anything he likes better.

When it’s really over and he can move again and he can feel his dick flagging, he pulls out of her, making sure not to lose the condom. He takes it off and ties it, then drops his hand over the far side of the bed to rest it on the bedframe. Gross, yes, but he’s not leaving this bed. He’s not leaving Rey so soon after what they just did.

He rolls close to her, and she accepts his offer and cuddles into him, so he wraps his arms around her.

“Sorry again for crying,” she says.

“Stop.” He kisses the top of her head. “Was it good?” he mumbles. If there’s something he can do better next time, he wants to know.

She sighs happily and he feels her smile against his chest as she wriggles closer. “Yeah. God, Ben, I’ve wanted you for so long. I can’t believe we finally did it.”

He tries to internalise that, that she really did want him this much before he had any idea, but it doesn’t quite sink in. He’ll work on that. He noses at her hair, hugs her a little tighter. “I really do love you, Rey.”

“I know.” He can tell from her tone she knows what he’s talking about. “I really love you too.”

“I’m gonna miss you like crazy when I leave.”

“I don’t want to talk about that now, it makes me sad.”

They haven’t talked about what they’ll do when he leaves for college. He knows she’s not going, she’s going to stay in town and train as a mechanic, but she’s too old for the foster system and will have to find a new place to live and she doesn’t have enough saved from her part-time job.

He shuffles down to rest his head next to hers on the pillow, their faces inches apart. “No matter what happens, you’ll always have a place with me. If it doesn’t work out here, I’ll send you a plane ticket, and I’ll smuggle you into my dorm, and you can live with me.”

She smiles and gives him a weak shove. “Shut up.”

“I mean it. People do it. I read an article.” Her smiles drops, and he knows she’s thinking about it after all, missing him before he is even gone, the same way he misses her so much sometimes he doesn’t know how he is going to survive it. “Maybe I’ll just defer. Stay here for another year with you.”

“Don’t even think it,” she threatens, and he understand why, she doesn’t want to mess with his life, his future like that, but his life has already been irrevocably changed by her so why not? Why be miserable just to earn an overpriced piece of paper?

“Rey… I’m kind of serious right now. I bet you could come with me. The city’s bigger than here, there’ll be more opportunities for you, and I can get a job too, and my parents won’t let me starve or be homeless no matter how stubborn I am. I would fucking love to live with you in some tiny shithole, biking to campus every day, while you fix carbonators on newspaper in the living room.”

“Carburettors,” she corrects him softly, tracing a fingertip in circles around his nipple.

“See? You’re so smart.” He kisses her forehead. “What I’m saying is… I want to be your safety net, the same way other people have family, you have me, okay? I might not have that much going for me, but I do have rich parents that replace their attention and time with money. So you’ll be okay no matter what… okay?”

For a second, Rey doesn’t say anything. Then her lip wobbles and she nods and buries her face in his chest, crying again. This time he thinks everything he could say has been said. He’s not going to take any of it back or pretend he loves her any less. So he doesn’t say anything, he just wraps his arms around her and lets her tears fall on his chest.


End file.
